Modern machine building industry demands that machine components are made more durable and resistant to wear. At present, one of the most promising methods for hardening work-pieces to make them more resistant to wear is laser heat treatment of workpiece surfaces. Scanning systems employed for such purposes in industrial lasers are the basic devices controlling the laser beam in order to ensure high quality and efficiency of laser treatment.
Known in the art is a scanner for industrial lasers (cf., French Patent Application No. 8,509,169), comprising a housing accomodating a movable scanning member, a means for inducing mechanical oscillations of the scanning member, which is connected with the housing, and at least two collision pairs, each such pair having two components secured so that they can interact with each other during displacements of the scanning member, one component being placed on the scanning member and the other in the housing.
However, this scanner is deficient in that, in order to reduce the effect of parameter fluctuations of the means for inducing mechanical oscillations and the scanning member on the operational conditions of the scanner, the speed of scanning is deliberately brought down. If the scanning speed is increased, the collision mode of operation can be upset and the scanner starts to operate in a collision-free mode at a low scanning speed and amplitude. In other words, the operation of the scanner is totally disturbed.
Besides, the deliberate reduction of the scanning speed in this scanner results in a lower collision speed of components of collision pairs. This leads to deviation from the desired optimal (sawtooth) scanning law and deterioration of the scanning accuracy.